Simone Porzio: Un aristotelico tra natura e grazia (review)

Modern scholarship has viewed Simone Porzio (1496-1554) as an Aristotelian follower of Pomponazzi, who held that reason alone could not demonstrate the immortality of the human soul. In this monograph Eva Del Soldato examines his writings in detail, including works available only in manuscript, to demonstrate that Porzio was a richer and more complex thinker.

Born in Naples, Porzio studied with Agostino Nifo and obtained doctorates of arts and medicine in 1520 and theology in 1522 at the University of Pisa. He taught at the University of Pisa until 1525, then natural philosophy at the University of Naples from 1529 to 1545, natural philosophy at the University of Pisa from 1545 to 1553, after which returned to Naples and died in 1554. In his second Pisan period he enjoyed the favor of Duke Cosimo I and participated in the activities of the Accademia Fiorentina, where he associated with Giambattista Gelli, who translated some of his works into Italian.

It is true that Porzio was a strict Aristotelian who argued strongly that the soul was mortal. But in other works, including lectures available only in manuscript, he addressed different topics and offered a wider range of views. In treatises on love and Petrarch's poetry Porzio saw love in Aristotelian terms as unrestrained passion and a form of living death in which man loses reason. He concluded that the solution was faith in Christ, and the gift of faith depends on grace. In several short works based on Aristotle's zoological works Porzio demonstrated his philological skill and knowledge of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle. He argued that the pseudo-Aristotelian work De coloribus was written by the ancient Theophrastus. In a treatise on pain he argued that pain came from the dispositions of soul and body rather than sense experience.

Porzio exhibited a strong fideistic tendency in several short works that dealt with ethical-theological concerns. In a short treatise on celibacy, Porzio wrote that although marriage is the solution for concupiscence, it was different for a priest, who was higher than a common man. Porzio showed the influence of Desiderius Erasmus and, possibly, evangelical views coming from Juan de Valdés, in treatises on prayer and the Our Father. In his Pisan lectures on Aristotle's De anima Porzio expressed doubt about purgatory, for which there was no scriptural support, and Lenten fasting. But ultimately he was an Aristotelian. In his major work, De rerum naturalium principiis (Naples, 1553), he rejected the superterrestial and affirmed the importance of materiality, while protecting free will. Although theology had a role to play in ethics, it did not affect all-powerful nature.

Del Soldato shows Porzio to have been a versatile and original thinker. In addition to the analyses of Porzio's writings culled from a wealth of manuscript sources, she provides quotations from contemporaries and near contemporaries who saw him as an innovator. The book also provides more than 120 pages of Porzio's works drawn from manuscript sources. This is a carefully prepared study that adds to our knowledge of Renaissance philosophy.